'River goddess,' I said at last.

'Merchant prince.'

'Do you love me?'

'Yes, to distraction. Do you love me?'

'Yes, infinitely.'

'Not infinitely,' said Georgie. 'Let us be exact. Your love is a great but finite quantity.'

We both knew what she referred to, but there were some topics which it was profitless to discuss, and this we both knew also. There was no question of my leaving my wife.

'Do you want me to put my hand in the fire?' I said.

Georgie still kept my gaze. At such moments her intelligence and her lucidity made her beauty ring like a silver coin. Then with a quick movement she turned about and laid her head upon my feet, prostrating herself before me. As I briefly contemplated her homage I reflected that there was no one in the world at whose feet I would myself have lain in such an attitude of abandonment. Then I knelt down and gathered her into my arms.

A little later when we had finished for the moment with kissing each other and had lit cigarettes, Georgie said, 'She knows your brother.'

'Who knows my brother?'

'Honor Klein.'

'Are you still on about her? Yes, I believe so. They met on some committee at the time of the Mexican Art Exhibition.'

'When am I going to meet your brother?' said Georgie.

'Never, as far as I'm concerned!'

'You said you always used to pass your girls on to him, because he couldn't get any of his own!'

'Maybe,' I said, 'but I'm certainly not going to pass you on!' Ever since I had made that injudicious remark my brother Alexander had become an object of romantic fantasy to my mistress.

'I want to meet him,' said Georgie, 'just because he's your brother. I adore siblings, having none of my own. Does he resemble you?'

'Yes, a bit,' I said. 'All Lynch-Gibbons resemble each other. Only he's round-shouldered and not so handsome. I'll introduce you to my sister Rosemary if you like.'

'I don't want to meet your sister Rosemary,' said Georgie, 'I want to meet Alexander, and I shall go on and on at you about it, just as I shall go on and on at you about that trip to New York.'

Georgie had an obsession about seeing New York, and I had in fact very rashly promised to take her with me on a business trip which I had made to that city last autumn. At the last moment, however, some qualm of conscience, or more likely some failure of nerve, at the prospect of having to lie on quite such a scale to Antonia made me change my mind. I have never seen anyone as bitterly and so childishly disappointed; and I had since then renewed my promise to take her with me on the next occasion.

'There's no need to nag me about that,' I said. 'One of these days we'll go to New York together, on condition I hear no more nonsense about paying your own fare. Think how much you disapprove of unearned income! You might at least let me spend mine on a sensible project!'

'Of course it's ludicrous your being a businessman,' said Georgie. 'You're far too clever. You ought to have been a don.'

'You imagine that being a don is the only proper way of being clever. Perhaps you are turning into a blue stocking after all.' I caressed one of her legs.

'You got the best History first of your year, didn't you?' said Georgie. 'What did Alexander get, by the way?'

'He got a second. So you see how unworthy of your attention he is.'

'At least he had the sense not to go into business,' said Georgie. My brother is a talented and quite well-known sculptor.

I was in fact half of Georgie's opinion that I should have been a don, and the subject was a painful one. My father had been a prosperous wine merchant, founder of the firm of Lynch-Gibbon and McCabe. On his death the firm had split into two parts, a larger part which remained with the McCabe family, and a smaller part which comprised the original claret connexion in which my grandfather had been interested, which I now managed myself. I knew too, although she never said so, that Georgie believed that my having stayed in business had something to do with Antonia. Her belief was not totally erroneous.

As I had no taste for this particular discussion and also wanted to get off the subject of my dear brother, I said, 'What will you be doing on Christmas Day? I shall want to think about you.'

Georgie frowned. 'Oh, I shall be out with some of the chaps from the School. There'll be a big party.' She added, 'I won't want to think about you. It's odd how it hurts at these times not to be part of your proper family.'

I had no answer to that. I said, 'I shall be having a quiet day with Antonia. We're staying in London this time. Rosemary will be at Rembers with Alexander.'

'I don't want to know,' said Georgie. 'I don't want to know what you do when you're not with me. It's better not to feed the imagination. I prefer to think that when you aren't here you don't exist.'

In fact, I thought along these lines myself. I was lying beside her now and holding her feet, her beautiful Acropolis feet as I called them, which were partly visible through the fine blue stockings. I kissed them, and returned to gazing at her. The heavy rope of hair descended between her breasts and she had swept a few escaping tresses severely back behind her ears. She had a beautifully shaped head: yes, positively Alexander must never meet her. I said, 'I'm bloody lucky.'

'You mean you're bloody safe,' said Georgie. 'Oh yes, you're safe, damn you!'

'Liaison dangereuse,' I said. 'And yet we lie, somehow, out of danger.'

'You do,' said Georgie. 'If Antonia ever found out about this, you'd drop me like a hot potato.'

'Nonsense!' I said. Yet I wondered if she wasn't right. 'She won't find out,' I said, 'and if she did, I'd manage. You are essential to me.'

'No one is essential to anyone,' said Georgie. 'There you go looking at your watch again. All right, go if you must. What about one for the road? Shall I open that bottle of Nuits de Young?'

'How many times must I tell you never to drink claret unless it has been open at least three hours?'

'Don't be so holy about it,' said Georgie. 'As far as I'm concerned the stuff is just booze.'

'Little barbarian!' I said affectionately. 'You can give me some gin and French. Then I really must go.'

Georgie brought me the glass and we sat enlaced like a beautiful netsuke in front of the warm murmuring fire. Her room seemed a subterranean place, remote, enclosed, hidden. It was for me a moment of great peace. I did not know then that it was the last, the very last moment of peace, the end of the old innocent world, the final moment before I was plunged into the nightmare of which these ensuing pages tell the story.

I pushed up the sleeve of her jersey and stroked her arm. 'Wonderful stuff, flesh.'

'When'll I see you?' said Georgie.

'Not till after Christmas,' I said. ‘I’ll come if I can about the twenty-eighth or twenty-ninth. But I'll ring up anyway before that.'

'I wonder if we'll ever be able to be more open about this?' said Georgie. 'I do rather hate the lies. Well, I suppose not.'

'Not,' I said. I didn't like the hard words she used, but I had to give it her back as sharply. 'We're stuck with the lies, I'm afraid. Yet, you know, this may sound perverse, but part of the nature, almost of the charm, of this relation is its being so utterly private.'

'You mean its being clandestine is of its essence,' said Georgie, 'and if it were exposed to the daylight it would crumble to pieces? I don't think I like that idea.'

'I didn't quite say that,' I said. 'But knowledge, other people's knowledge, does inevitably modify what it touches. Remember the legend of Psyche, whose child, if she told about her pregnancy, would be mortal, whereas if she kept silent it would be a god.'

It was an unfortunate speech on which to part from Georgie, for it brought our minds back to something which I at least preferred never now to think about. Last spring my beloved had become pregnant. There was nothing to be done but to get rid of the child. Georgie had gone through with the hideous business in the manner that I would have expected of her, calm, laconic, matter-of-fact, even cheering me along with her surly wit. We had found it exceedingly difficult to discuss the matter even at the time, and we had not spoken of it since. What vast wound that catastrophe had perhaps made in Georgie's proud and upright spirit I did not know. For myself, I got off with an extraordinary ease. Because of Georgie's character, her toughness and the stoical nature of her devotion to me, I had not had to pay. It had all been quite uncannily painless. I was left with a sense of not having suffered enough. Only sometimes in dreams did I experience certain horrors, glimpses of a punishment which would perhaps yet find its hour.